Four Corners

Can Australians trust the labels on the food they buy?

In a major two-part Four Corners investigation, Adele Ferguson teams up with forensic food scientists to examine the integrity of Australia's food supply.

The result of an eight-month investigation, the program commissions extensive laboratory testing of everyday supermarket products and interrogates the global supply chains and regulatory systems that shape what ends up on our supermarket shelves. The shocking results raise serious questions about food authenticity, misleading origin claims and undeclared ingredients in common pantry items.

Food fraud is easy to commit, hard to detect, and worth billions. And the people paying the price are consumers. Across two programs, Ferguson follows the food trail from Australian supermarkets to international supply chains, revealing how products can be adulterated long before they reach the shopping trolley or are linked to deeply unethical labour practices.

Using exclusive forensic testing, undercover reporting and insider accounts, Duped unmasks a lucrative form of organised fraud.

In the second part of a Four Corners investigation, Adele Ferguson follows food supply chains from cocoa farms in West Africa to fruit farms in Australia.

Australians love chocolate. We eat more than 160,000 tonnes of it each year. It is sold to us as a guilt-free pleasure.

But few consumers know where cocoa comes from, or who pays the price for producing it.

In the second part of this major Four Corners investigation, Gold Walkley winner Adele Ferguson follows food supply chains from cocoa farms in West Africa to fruit farms in Australia, exposing the hidden human cost behind everyday food items.

This is the story behind the food on our supermarket shelves, the workers we rarely see, and the promises and labels consumers are asked to trust. After watching, you may never look at the food on your supermarket shelves the same way again.

The investigation begins in West Africa, where much of the world's cocoa is grown, and goes inside the multibillion-dollar industry, where ethical certifications and sustainability claims on chocolate wrappers promise consumers they are making the right choice. With rare access to remote communities and cocoa farms in Ghana, Four Corners examines whether these promises stand up to scrutiny.

Returning to Australia, Adele Ferguson traces the fruit on our supermarket shelves back to the farms where it is grown, hearing from workers who say exploitation is happening here too. Across two continents, this investigation asks why exploitation persists despite decades of promises to stamp it out, and who is responsible for ensuring the food Australian's buy is produced fairly?

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